Yahoo tops the list of largest ever data breaches

The biggest data breach in history just got even bigger. Three times bigger.

Three billion accounts at Yahoo were affected by a massive hack in 2013, the internet firm’s parent company, Verizon, revealed Tuesday. That’s up from the roughly one billion when Yahoo first revealed the breach last year.

The latest disclosure cements Yahoo’s place at the top of a long and ignominious list of massive security breaches:

In September 2016, Yahoo said that data associated with at least 500 million accounts had been stolen. Three months later, it disclosed a second breach — the one that’s now been revealed to have affected all three billion customer accounts that existed at the time.

The credit monitoring company caused widespread alarm last month when it revealed that the personal information of 145.5 million people was compromised in a breach.

Beyond the high number of customers potentially affected, the Equifax hack is significant because of the sensitive information at risk: social security numbers, addresses and the numbers of some driver’s licenses.

In 2008, the credit card processor was hit by an attack that exposed an estimated 130 million credit and debit card numbers. Heartland eventually paid more than $110 million to credit card companies to settle related claims.

LinkedIn

Peace, the hacker tied to the MySpace breach, also took credit for breaking into LinkedIn in 2012. The hack wasn’t revealed, however, until last year.

LinkedIn said “more than 100 million” members were affected. The hacker reportedly tried to sell the account information online.